Very easy to forget how much of the modern religious institution is just a stop-gap for our decayed and broken public sector. Religious schooling, religious daycare, religious pantries and addiction treatment centers, religious medical centers, religious counseling services, religious jobs programs, religious housing…

Secular atheists don’t organize, they don’t form these strong community bonds with their neighbors, and they don’t collaborate to pursue these large community projects in a reliable way. I blame a lot of this on modern western libertarianism, which tends to latch on to the atheist movement like a parasite. Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand have been a scourge on secularism for over a century. Every time secularists try to create these large, lasting, communal institutions, they get denounced as “Evil Communists” and “Tax-and-Spend Liberals” from within their own organizations.

You’re never going to see the Joel Osteen crowd tear him down for building a bigger Mega-Church. But the Sam Harris types will eviscerate secularists for doing any kind of more-useful equivalent.